2

Contents
I. Title
Page…………………………………………………………..…………………….…...1
II. Table of
Contents……………………………………………………...…………………….…...2
III. Executive
Summary………………………………..………………………………………….…...3
a) Situation
b) Background and Analysis
c) Recommendations
d) Response
IV. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….….4
V. Situation……………………….………………………………………………….…….4
VI. Background and
Analysis……………………………………………………………………….….…..4-5
a) Employees
b) Investors
c) Customers
VII. Recommendations……………………………………………….………..………….5-8
a) Employees
b) Investors
VIII. Response………………………………………………………………………..….8-12
a) Employees
b) Investors
IX. Conclusion………………………………………………..……………………….....12
X. References List….………………………………………………...……………...13-14
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Executive Summary
Within this Corporate Communication plan, we describe the steps that are necessary to take in
order to solve the employee dissatisfaction we see throughout our company. Implementing these
steps will improve the views of our stakeholders, and ensure what our company’s workers are
saying matches up with our values. Below you will find a concise summary highlighting the
important points of the plan below.

Situation
Tesla is described as a leader in the auto industry, creating a luxury car with no carbon
emissions. However, many people outside of Tesla are saying that we are not financially
sustainable and unfair to our employees. The key issue that these disconnects in our narratives
present is employee dissatisfaction and their threats to unionize. When considering these threats,
it is important that we are paying attention to our stakeholders in order to keep them satisfied
with Tesla.

Background & Analysis

After analyzing our stakeholders, we have determined that employees are the top priority,
followed by investors, and lastly our customers. Our employees are suffering the consequences
of our lack of focus on the safety of our work environments and our low wages. Our external
stakeholders hear about the company solely on word of mouth, and therefore it determines our
reputation.

Recommendations
Our recommendation for our employees is to post a video to Facebook explaining our plans of
outsourcing a consulting company to improve the lives of our factory employees. We suggest
hiring TheEmpathyBusiness to train our factory managers to efficiently handle employee
problems. We will then communicate past success stories of the business with our investors.
Market capitalization is a concern for Tesla and keeping our investors informed will help them
understand the importance of empathy training for our company’s future.

Response
For our response to the communication plan, we have outlined a plan of action and the total
budget necessary to accomplish our goal. Our plan of action consists of four steps; educating the
employees, hiring a third party consultant firm, informing our investors of our efforts, and
implementing all necessary changes in order to make our factories more efficient. The total
budget of hiring our consultants and advisors is $501,580.

Conclusion
In this Corporate Communication Plan deliverable, we presented a plan to address our key issues
and how to communicate with our key stakeholder groups in order to solve employee
dissatisfaction within the company. It is clear that the time to solve these issues is now.
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Introduction
Within this Corporate Communication Plan deliverable, we will present a plan addressing our
key issue and how to communicate solutions with our key stakeholder groups. Below, you will
find a communication plan to solve our employee dissatisfaction issues and potential rewards for
doing so. We will then restate our key issue and stakeholders, as well as provide detailed
recommendations and the projected response to these actions.

Situation
Throughout our research, we discovered several internal and external narratives. The main
internal narratives that we chose to analyze were our positive environmental impact, our
profitability, as well as our company’s leadership in innovation. The external narratives that we
analyzed were financial instability, employee dissatisfaction, yet still a positive environmental
impact. While comparing and contrasting our company’s narratives, we were able to see what
specific problems stemmed from these conflicts between the internal and external narratives.

Background & Analysis

After researching Tesla’s narratives, the most prevalent disconnect that created a key issue in our
company is the threat of unionization by our employees. Our CEO’s focus on efficiency fails to
recognize the problems that our employees are experiencing.

Employees
Our employees desire safety, work-life balance, as well as fair compensation. The ranking of our
stakeholders is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Our employees are our top priority,
considering that they are definitive
stakeholders. Because we rely on word of
mouth to advertise our products and the
innovation throughout our company it is
important that what our employees are
saying about a company aligns with our
company values. Tesla’s high injury rates
are deterring workers from applying to
Tesla. For example, Business insider
highlighted our company’s struggle to find manufacturing talent specifically in California. In
addition, according to Arstechnica.com, our factory employees work well over 40 hours per
work and that’s not included with the mandatory overtime. Cost of living in Fremont, California
is consistently rising over the years, with an average cost of approximately $500,000 in 2012 and
climbing to a $1,035,000 average price in just 2018 (see Figure 2). A financial study by
GoBankingRates has found that you would need to earn $110,000 in order to just cover costs and
 5

discretionary items. After having done the math, our workers are earning not even half of that, at
43,000 a year.

Investors
These threats of unionization also cause our
Investors to lack confidence in our financials
and question their position in the company. Our
investors are ranked as the second priority in our
company as dominant stakeholders. Tesla
depends heavily on funding from investors,
meaning that they are an important factor in
influencing the capitalization of the company.
With employee sentiment becoming an
Figure 2 increasingly valuable factor that investors use to
determine the health and risk associated with a company’s financial future, it is important that we
are adamant about keeping them informed.

Customers
Lastly, our customers are considered dangerous stakeholders making them our third priority. Due
to the fact that electric vehicles make up a small percentage of the automobile market, it is
important to satisfy all needs of our customers. In our recent production efforts, we seemed to
have met these needs by reducing our prices and increasing safety features. However, these
improvements will go unnoticed due to the dissatisfaction of our employees.

Given the history of employee strikes in the automobile industry that we have seen with our
competitors, it is obvious that when employees are dissatisfied, it negatively affects customer
satisfaction and sales. For example, Freepress.com stated that in 2007 General Motors recorded
one of the largest strikes in US history. GM witnessed 73,000 employees walk out and begin to
strike against the values of their company. The motive of this strike was extremely similar to the
problems our employees are facing today. This strike resulted in a short-term decline in sales, as
customers left to purchase their vehicles from various competitors.

Although all these stakeholders are important to our company’s success, we believe that it is
most important to communicate these problems to our employees and investors at this time.

Recommendations
After identifying which key stakeholders to communicate to, we have developed different
communication plans with our employees and our investors. We will directly communicate with
our employees through social media and include our plans to hire a consultant to address their
complaints. We will keep an open and honest communication without investors. And we will
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keep them informed of the financial benefits of empathy training our external consulting
company will bring.

Employees
As Definitive stakeholders, our employees value urgency, requiring immediate communication.
Understanding the demographics of our
employees assists the development of an Figure 3
optimal communication strategy. Survey
results from PayScale have mapped out the
median salary (beginning to mid-career), age,
and gender of all Tesla employees. The
results of our employees showed $81,400 -
$118,500, 30 years, and 80% male 20%
female. The most successful forms of
communication for these demographics is
implementing the use of Facebook. The use
of videos for announcing important
information has proven to stimulate interaction from employees, creating a 56% higher amount
of likes, 36% more likely to get comments, and 39% more likely to be shared. The latter portion
of those statistics show how we can expand our information at a low cost, but with a more
effective strategy (see Figure 3).

Within this video, we will discuss how we are hiring a consultant to improve our workplace
conditions. The main reports in our research have shown that factory employees are complaining
of being overworked and work in unsafe environments. Our OSHA reports our injury rates are
31% higher than the industry average. And our serious injury rates is 103% higher than the
industry average.We have addressed employees’ overtime problem in October 2016. Employees
used to have to work 12-hour shifts six days a week; we declined overtime hours by 50% (Wong,
2017). But our factories are still described as having a prevailing mood of “mass
disappointment”. The addition of corporate empathy training can lead the way to find a solution
to improve factory safety with the help of our workers.

Lexus and Nissan hired TheEmpathyBusiness as an external consultant. TheEmpathyBusiness

raised both companies’ customer satisfaction through implementing an empathy plan in their
product development. They created a new vernacular for the way Lexus describes the empathy
that goes into their products; it resulted in a positive impact on their customers (The Empathy
Business, 2018). And Nissan adopted TheEmpathyBusiness empathy training plan by making
their technician car designers wear fake “mommy bump” suits. It was a fake 9-month pregnancy
suit to simulate how pregnant mother interact with the car (The Empathy Business, 2018). Nissan
modified their SUVs to adapt to the lifestyle of mothers, a significant part of their consumer
 7

base. Our problems, however, do not revolve our product development but revolve around the
people making our products in the factories.

Tesla is experiencing disengaged and unsatisfied employees, an avoidable workplace mistake.

Incorporating empathy in the workplace will reduce injuries and improve employee happiness
and performance. We can focus empathy training to managers and supervisors in the factories.
One report has been found where an employee described a conversation with his manager in
regards to the pain of his job and was simply told: “to just work through it”. Another report
interviewed a Fremon factory employee on his ideas on how to simplify the work he is doing in
the factories, but his input was not welcomed by his management. This opportunity empathy
training presents itself, training our managers on the importance input from employees; they
valuable resource into the production process, where many injuries occur. Managers can learn
how to effectively communicate to employees about these problems and create a work
environment that welcomes ideas with empathy training.

TheEmpathyBusiness has a 12 to 20-week process that

looks at a company’s empathy levels across consumers
Figure 4
and employees. One of their specialties is “Empathy in
Complaint Handling”. The goal of this business segment
to identify problems in a company, generate solutions to
address it, and unveil the impact of their results to
understand the root cause of the complaints. They have
successfully reduced complaints of one of their financial
clients with over 200,000 complaints.

This consulting company focuses improving companies

in the Empathy Index. In Figure 4, you can see what the
company considers when working on improving
employee satisfaction. Companies in the top of the
Empathy Index retain top talent and reap financial rewards. We should communicate with our
investors about the financial rewards of being a part of this index.

Investors
Our investors possess power and legitimacy, making them extremely important to our company.
58.38% of our company’s shares are owned by Institutions. Our biggest shareholders are FMR
LLC, Baillie Gifford & Co, and Price T Rowe Associates Inc. These companies are all
investment and asset management companies, meaning that we need to tailor communication
specific to their interests. These interests include financial stability, Tesla’s transparency with
financials, and problems within the company.
 8

In order for our company to be financially stable, we would need to be transparent with current
and potential investors. According to BusinessInsider, Tesla has slowly been pulling away from
reporting and posting financials to the public. These actions could cause the company to take a
big hit that would result in investors considering their position with Tesla. The way we deal with
this situation now could have a lasting effect on the future of the company.

We feel that it is necessary to coordinate with our current and potential investors to receive
insight on how we can become profitable. Our financials consist of high debt, but with the help
of our investors, they could get us out of the gutters. Shying away from our endeavors will not
benefit our company financially, and it is important to be transparent due to their power and
urgency. We need to keep our investors informed of the potential profitability empathy training
will bring to our business.

Our investors should know the economic rewards linked to empathy training. Companies that
employ empathy in their business are ranked in the Empathy Index (Weller, 2016). The majority
of the companies at the top of the list are technology companies which present an opportunity for
Tesla. According to FastCompany.com, the top 10 companies in the Index generated 50% more
earnings than those ranked last (Dishman, 2015). And the same article also noted that the top 5
companies have grown by 23% (Dishman, 2015). Tesla has goals to increase its market share,
and our investors can help us get to that goal with this training. We will inform our investors of
the costs of these pieces of training.

Response
After receiving the recommendations from our investors and employees, we have to form a call
to action to implement these recommendations. In order to fully implement our
recommendations, we would need to form a detailed next steps process, create a projected
budget, predict a return on investment, and also introduce a timeline that we will use for our
investors and employees. By pursuing these actions, our company will be able to lower
dissatisfaction rates, as well a improve financial stability.

Detailed Next Steps for Employees

We will need to hire consultants to implement employee recommendations described above.
There will be a total of five consultants that will be hired in our Fremont, California factory. Our
factory consists of five departments; paint, plastics, body, assembly, and stamping. These
consultants will be assigned to a specific department within the factory. To eliminate employee
dissatisfaction, our company will hire the best consultants. The consultants that we will reach out
to are from TheEmpathyBusiness. In order to reach out to these consultants, our team will send a
letter of request to a specific member and also include preferred salary base.
 9

These consultants have specialized in similar issues our company is facing. Based on our
competitor, “Nissan” they have acquired the same consultants. These consultants in return, raised
its customer satisfaction through implementing an empathy plan in their product development
process.

In addition, we will also hire an employee advisor for every manager that will be stationed at the
Fremont factory facility. Employee advisors will review and report employee wages within our
facility. Our employees are dissatisfied as they are being paid 17-21 dollars an hour, while other
companies within the car industry are being paid $25 an hour. The employee advisors will
explore and look into employee wages, as they will furthermore try to increase their pay per
hour. Each employee advisor will report on a bi-weekly basis to managers of each department.

Detailed Next Steps for Investors

The next steps that will have to implement from investor recommendations above are to draft a
letter to the shareholders. Writing letters to our investors will keep them in the loop of all
financial actions made by our company. We will provide shareholder letters to our all of our
investors. We believe that all of our investors are extremely valuable to our company, but
appealing specifically to our top five investors will significantly benefit our company. As seen
below in Figure 5, these companies have invested the most money into our company. It is in our
best favor to keep these investors up to date with our financial status by drafting a shareholder
letter, scheduling meetings with shareholders, and implementing recommendations from these
investors. These are the steps that our company needs to pursue in order to slowly become a
profitable and financially stable company.
Figure 5

Projected Budget for Employees

In order to be an efficient company in the future, we need to hire consultants, and employee
advisors to review our workplace safety conditions and employee wages. These two sectors are
valuable to our company, and as dominant stakeholders, it is important that these two factors
implement our efforts we are making to improve on for these current problems.
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The average salary for a consultant is approximately $59,600 a year. We suggest hiring a
consultant in each department in our Fremont factory facility before moving onward across the
United States. There are five departments in our factory, and the total cost for these five
consultants will cost $298,000 a year. Consultants will monitor and keep tight tabs on safety
conditions in each department. Furthermore, consultants will report back to Project Managers
after each month in regards to their findings.

On the other hand, employee advisors will document employee wages. Our employees are paid
17-21 dollars an hour, while most auto workers in the US
earn $25 an hour. We suggest that we should hire an
Figure 6 employee advisor for every manager that is stationed at the
Fremont factory facility to allocate money more
proficiently. The cost per employee advisor is $45,300 a
year. The max amount of employee advisors we will
consume will be no more than six, and no less than three.
On average, will spend somewhere between $135,900 and
$271,800 a year just for employee advisors. Furthermore,
by summing up our total cost of human resources, we will
spend $433,000 to $569,000 a year on our new hires (See
Figure 6).

Projected budget for Investors

In order for our company to be financially stable, we would need to be transparent with current
and potential investors. There is no reported or associated cost to draft a letter to the
shareholders. This will be an inexpensive cost, and it will help save us money in the long run. To
be effective, we will need to appeal to all of our investors, but focus on the top five investors will
be listed above. Through this letter, it will be an insignificant cost, and would speak to specific
events that have happened throughout the year, highlight changes in the company's stock price,
and reiterate aspects of our vision.

ROI
After allowing these consultants and advisors to take a deeper look into our culture and current
procedures, we plan that the recommendations that we receive will result in positive change for
our company. The changes that we plan to implement will result in both short-term and long-
term gains for our company. First, after the advisors analyze our current factory employees, we
will be able to recognize where immediate changes to our factory, for our employees, are needed.
By making changes that our employee’s purpose, we will be able to increase our employee’s
 11

communication. Not only will this increase in communication be recognized employee to

employee, but also we will be able to recognize the improvement of our employees and upper-
management communication.

This communication improvement will result in an approximate increase of around twenty

percent to our employee satisfaction ratings. This will change our current employee satisfaction
star ratings from a 3.3 to 4.3 stars out of five. Next, our hired consultants will be able to offer
immediate returns to each branch’s leader. These consultants will be able to assist in increasing
our factory production efficiency and decreasing the overall injury rate per factory employee.
The increase of factory production efficiency will be able to help us save money due to the
limitation of the number of factory supplies. The decrease in factory injury rate will also be able
to help us save money due to the fact that we will have to hire fewer employees and pay our
employees for fewer hours. The most important long-term gain will also be a result of the
changes in our factory culture. This plan, by assisting employees and helping managers, we will
be able to introduce a successful and profitable Model 3 Tesla.

Timeline for Implementation

Below in Figure 7 we have provided a complete visual for the timeline of our Corporate
Communication Plan.
Figure 7

The first order of business for our company is to create an effective video for our employees.
After this video is created, we will release it in an efficient manner to guarantee that the video
will affect all of our employees. The intention of this video is to educate our employees on the
upcoming changes that will be made within Tesla and its factories. After this video is released,
our next step is to contact TheEmpathyBusiness. While in contact, we will select the advisors
and consultants that best match our needs in order to improve the company as a whole. Next, we
will send a handwritten letter to all of our shareholders. This is a task of heavy importance
 12

because we heavily value or shareholders and want them to be up to date on all ongoing events
within the corporation. Finally, after all analysis is completed by our advisors and consultants,
we will gather all of their recommendations in order to best implement a proper adjustment.
These implemented adjustments will be made to all of the Tesla factories.

Conclusion
This corporate communication deliverable outlined the company’s current situation, analyzed
our internal and external narratives, gave recommendations on how Tesla can effectively
communicate to its key stakeholders to solve its current issues, and provided a clear outline of
the detailed steps necessary to carry out these objectives. Considering employee dissatisfaction
and unionization as Tesla’s main issues, the company can make progress in solving these issues
by consistently educating, connecting, and informing its employees and investors. These issues
have presented the company with an opportunity for growth, and now is the perfect time to seize
this opportunity by taking action on these issues before they escalate into something greater. We
request that you make these changes in order to improve the standing of our company with our
stakeholders.
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Reference List

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DeBord, Matthew. (2017, October 7). Tesla is struggling to build the model 3-here’s why.
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make-model-3-2017-10

Dishman, L. (2015, December 04). These Are The Most Empathetic Companies In The World.
Retrieved February 23, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3054098/these-are-the-most-
empathetic-companies-in-the-world

Guess, Megan. (2017, February 9). Tesla employee writes of low wages, poor morale; company
denies claims. Retrieved February 21, 2018 from https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/tesla-
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Hall, B. (2017, August 31). Good news! How to communicate positive news to employees.
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communicate-positive-news-to-employees/

Lambert, F. (2016, March 07). Tesla and SpaceX stand out in tech employee survey for the most
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stressful-and-lowest-paying-jobs-but-also-most-meaningful/

Laewrence, D. Eric. (2017, September 7). General Motors workers on strike at Cami Assembly
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(2018, February 16). Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) ownership summary. Retrieved February 19, 2018, from
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/ownership-summary/

Weller , D. (2016, December 19). Empathy as a Measure of Corporate Success. Retrieved

February 20, 2018, from http://www.leadershipall.com/empathy-as-a-measure-of-corporate-
success/

Wong, J. C. (2017, May 18). Tesla factory workers reveal pain, injury and stress: Everything
feels like the future but us. Retrieved February 25, 2018, from
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-
musk